Cream of Broccoli Soup

Okay, as mentioned previously, I had tons of broccoli between my own bumper crop and the CSA farm's bumper crop. As I had never made cream of broccoli soup, I decided to give it a try.

First, I researched recipes online. Later, after it was done, I remembered that I had a basic recipe in my red checkered Better Homes & Garden cookbook. It was similar to the one I used. Oh well.

I picked a simple one from allrecipes.com, called

The Best Cream of Broccoli Soup

2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, chopped

1 stalk celery, chopped

3 cups chicken broth

8 cups broccoli florets

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 cups milk

ground black pepper to taste

Melt 2 tablespoons butter in medium sized stock pot, and saute onion and celery until tender. Add broccoli and broth, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

Pour the soup into a blender, filling the pitcher no more than halfway full. Hold down the lid of the blender with a folded kitchen towel, and carefully start the blender, using a few quick pulses to get the soup moving before leaving it on to puree. Puree in batches until smooth and pour into a clean pot. Alternately, you can use a stick blender and puree the soup right in the cooking pot.

In small saucepan, over medium-heat melt 3 tablespoons butter, stir in flour and add milk. Stir until thick and bubbly, and add to soup. Season with pepper and serve.

I pretty much followed the recipe, and I used my stick blender, which saved time and mess. I didn't measure the broccoli, I just used a lot, probably a lot more than they called for and I think I should have used more onion. I used whole milk so it would be more creamy, and I used vegetable broth. I was out of chicken stock. And I steamed the broccoli ahead of time, mostly because I was using some of the stems and figured they needed extra time. Big mistake.

Thing #1 to note for next time: even if you cook them down, broccoli stems are stringy. And the strings are not fun to run into when you're eating the soup. Maybe peeling them would help with that. The smaller stems from the branches near the florets were fine, but the bigger ones were not. I picked out the biggest ones before I made the soup because they seemed too tough.

Thing #2 to note for next time: vegetable broth doesn't have as good of a flavor as chicken stock. I'm sorry, it just doesn't. Personally, I don't think it makes a good soup base, even for vegetable soups. But all I had was the veg broth, so that's what I used. The soup was kind of bland and not very exciting. Veg stock is also not as salty, and the recipe didn't call for salt, and while I did put in a little, it wasn't enough. Extra salt and pepper in the bowl helped, but it wasn't super awesome.

Thing #3 to note for next time: my kids didn't like it very much, but they ate it more after I offered them some parmesan cheese to sprinkle on it. They still didn't like it much. Maybe next time I'll do cheesy cream of broccoli.

All-in-all, not a complete bust, but definitely room for improvement. Here's a picture of the soup in my pretty soup tureen.

If any of you have a better recipe or any useful suggestions, I'd appreciate them. I do like broccoli and it grows so well around here in the winter. No bug or disease problems, so we grow a lot of it.